alytic vision of Mrs. Rooth's conservatism; but he observed at the
same time that his companion made no motion to rise. He made none
either; he only said:

"We're very frivolous, the way we chatter. What you want to do to get
your foot in the stirrup is supremely difficult. There's everything to
overcome. You've neither an engagement nor the prospect of an
engagement."

"Oh you'll get me one!" Her manner presented this as so certain that it
wasn't worth dilating on; so instead of dilating she inquired abruptly a
second time: "Why do you think I'm so simple?"

"I don't then. Didn't I tell you just now that you were extraordinary?
That's the term, moreover, that you applied to yourself when you came to
see me--when you said a girl had to be a kind of monster to wish to go
on the stage. It remains the right term and your simplicity doesn't
mitigate it. What's rare in you is that you have--as I suspect at
least--no nature of your own." Miriam listened to this as if preparing
to argue with it or not, only as it should strike her as a sufficiently
brave picture; but as yet, naturally, she failed to understand. "You're
always at concert pitch or on your horse; there are no intervals. It's
the absence of intervals, of a _fond_ or background, that I don't
comprehend. You're an embroidery without a canvas."

"Yes--perhaps," the girl replied, her head on one side as if she were
looking at the pattern of this rarity. "But I'm very honest."

"You can't be everything, both a consummate actress and a flower of the
field. You've got to choose."

She looked at him a moment. "I'm glad you think I'm so wonderful."

"Your feigning may be honest in the sense that your only feeling is your
feigned one," Peter pursued. "That's what I mean by the absence of a
ground or of intervals. It's a kind of thing that's a labyrinth!"

"I know what I am," she said sententiously.

But her companion continued, following his own train. "Were you really
so frightened the first day you went to Madame Carre's?"

She stared, then with a flush threw back her head. "Do you think I was
pretending?"

"I think you always are. However, your vanity--if you had any!--would be
natural."

"I've plenty of that. I'm not a bit ashamed to own it."

"You'd be capable of trying to 'do' the human peacock. But excuse the
audacity and the crudity of my speculations--it only proves my interest.
What is it that you know you are?"

"Why, an artist. Isn't that a canv